Racing Across the Globe, One Adventure at a Time!

Eleven Things You Probably Don’t Know About Me

It’s been a while since I told you some random facts about me. You get a lot of travel and running stories here on the blog, but not so much (anymore, at least) about my outside life in general. If for no other reason than I feel like writing this random post, here you go!

1. I hate smoothies: I’m apparently the one person in the world who doesn’t like smoothies. It’s a shame, really, because it is such a healthy breakfast and such a great way to get in fruits and veggies, but I just abhor them. I don’t even really like milkshakes, so I think it is just a texture issue, but either way, you will never catch me drinking a smoothie. I’d honestly rather not eat anything.

2. At one point, I could play (well) 8 musical instruments: I started taking piano lessons when I was 3.5 years old. My dad owned a piano dealership when I was a kid, and my mom had grown up playing. I really, really hated it (sorry, mom and dad) but was quite good at it. They let me quit in middle school as long as I agreed to play in the marching band, which I agreed to. As it turns out, I had a natural talent for musical instruments and picked up a bunch of them quickly, moving around to fill in whatever spot needed to be filled that day. I ended up “first chair” at every instrument I played, but I still never enjoyed it. I quit before high school and haven’t picked up an instrument since. Today, I can’t even read music. Kind of pathetic, right?

First 6th grader ever to play first chair sax at my middle school! Last time I ever wore those sunglasses.

3. I saved 120 hours of vacation time last year by working while traveling: A lot of people wonder how I can take so much time off work to travel the way that I do. The answer is – I don’t take a lot of time off work! I’m very lucky to have the type of job that allows me to work from pretty much anywhere that there is internet (or even without it for short spells). I take my laptop with me on nearly every trip I go on (except Nepal and now Africa) – anywhere that there will be internet. By working throughout ALL of my flights, in airports, and during downtime (such as when AJ is sleeping in or we’re driving somewhere), I managed to save 120 hours of PTO last year that I would normally have had to use. That’s 3 whole weeks! While some people think I’m nuts, I really like it. I have the peace of mind of knowing my projects aren’t crashing and burning while I’m gone, and I also get to travel more! What’s not to like?

4. I’m still waiting for my “biological clock” to start ticking: My whole life, I have wanted to adopt children, but I have never really felt a strong pull towards biological kids. Everyone told me that as I got older, that would change, but it hasn’t at all. Now, I’m 31 and still I feel exactly the same way…and people are still telling me the same thing. Honestly, it’s getting a little old. Maybe how I feel will change and maybe it won’t, but I’m ok with whatever (and whoever) our family ends up looking like!

5. I was only allowed to watch educational TV and play educational computer games when I was a kid: My parents were pretty strict about the amount of television and video games my brother and I were allowed to play. We were allowed to watch half an hour per day of an educational show, and the only computer games we could play were educational. You know what’s educational? The Magic School Bus.Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego? The Oregon Trail. Various spelling games I can’t remember the names of. The list was endless. I think it was one of the smartest things my parents did for us, and honestly, I still enjoy all those games and shows now. I apologize in advance to my future children, who will also be living by those rules. PS: While googling this, I just learned that Netflix is bringing back Carmen Sandiego in 2019! YASSSS.

I don’t want to say this game taught me everything I know about geography, but it taught me a lot.

6. My tastebuds completely changed when I started running: I was an extremely picky eater as a kid (sorry again, mom) and that did not get better later in life when I started struggling with my eating disorder. It did, however, change a lot when I started running. I almost never ate any vegetables, hated different types of seasonings, didn’t like anything spicy, etc. Once I started running (especially when I started running a lot), I was so hungry all the time that I just stopped being picky. Things that used to disgust me, like broccoli (which literally made me throw up as a child on multiple occasions), suddenly seemed delicious. Today, I’ll eat pretty much anything as long as it is gluten-free and won’t make my ulcer worse.

7. I am completely wine illiterate: I can’t remember if I wrote about this or not, but prior to going to New Zealand, I thought there were only two types of grapes: red and white. I thought that different types of wines just came from different seasonings you put in with the red and white grapes. I realize that makes no sense, but I just honestly had never thought about it before. Obviously, you now think I’m an idiot, but just in case one of you out there also doesn’t know – types of wines are named for the types of grapes they are grown from. There’s like a million kinds. CHARDONNAY IS A GRAPE, PEOPLE. Man, the more you know.

8. I’m terrified of the dark: You already know I’m afraid of birds, but did you know I’m afraid of the dark? Like, won’t turn off my bedroom light and walk across the room, even when AJ and my dog are in there and even when I know it is perfectly safe. I make AJ turn on his nightstand light before I turn off the overhead light. Even if I were to be in a completely empty room with the lights on and then have the lights turned off, I would lose it. Hell is just one big, dark room, in my opinion.

9. I had an entire wall full of Jonathan Taylor Thomas (JTT) posters when I was a kid. As a child growing up in the 90s, I spent an unreasonable amount of my allowance money on such fine publications as YM, TigerBeat, and Seventeen. The best part of those magazines was obviously the full page photos of all the hot celebrities of the day, my personal favorite of which was Jonathan Taylor Thomas (who played the middle child on Home Improvement, in case you lived under a rock in the 90s). I had a wall dedicated solely to posters of him, and then another wall with posters of other cute celebrities who I also liked but who did not quite deserve their own wall, such as Andrew Keegan, Devon Sawa, etc.

I had this EXACT poster on my wall. What a dreamboat.

10. I have an extreme aversion to cash: I really, really hate using cash, carrying cash, and having cash. It makes me extremely uncomfortable, and I feel like I am going to lose it or spend it all at once on a giant Russian doll or something else I don’t need. For some reason, I am much less frugal with cash than with a credit or debit card (I know it’s supposed to work the opposite way), so I try to avoid it as much as possible. This is actually one of the few things I really don’t like about traveling – visiting countries that require me to carry cash because they don’t take my debit cards! The horror.

11. I haven’t had caffeine in over 8 years: As early readers of this blog may remember, I have a minor heart problem called a Paraxysmal Atrial Tachycardia that was likely brought on by my years battling my eating disorder. It basically means that the electrical impulses in my heart do not always fire correctly, and sometimes, my heart rates gets too high and cannot come down on its own. I used to take medication for it. I’m not allowed to have any sizeable amount of caffeine (i.e. no coffee or caffeinated soda, but some low caffeine tea is ok). Yup – I have not had a cup of coffee in about 8.5 years! People ask me how I live like this, but honestly, it was one of the best things to ever happen to me. My energy levels are way more consistent now that I am not relying on caffeine to wake me up. Unfortunately, I had to wake up at 4 am every day for work back when I found out that I had to cut the caffeine, so that was pretty painful, but once I got over the hump, I was good to go!

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23 thoughts on “Eleven Things You Probably Don’t Know About Me”

Mind blown! I feel like there’s a huge waste of talent for musical instruments there!! And, I also hate smoothies – not to the extent that you do but still. And I feel bad for your future adopted children with all those educational games. I know they are super great for young minds but I’m super interested to see what happens when you actually have kids. A lot more than idolizing JJT has changed since the 90s where kids are concerned 🙂

Hahaha my parents feel the same way! I just never loved music. It’s a shame because that’s probably the one thing I have natural talent at! Oh well. I was a really big nerd when I was a kid, so I didn’t really mind only playing educational games. I’m sure it is much different today…one of the many reasons I am hesitant to become a parent! iPads stress me out!

I grew up learning how to play the piano, and yet despite taking lessons for about five years, I never progressed beyond the beginner level. I was the complete opposite of you in terms of musical ability.

Random fact: I grew up in Southern California (never experiencing cold weather and winter) and moved to Toronto as an adult for work, where I experienced winter for the first time. Consequently I only understand hot temperatures in Fahrenheit and cold temperatures in Celsius. Even though I’ve lived in New York for 9 years, come winter, when people tell me how cold it is, I always have to convert it to Celsius.

That’s so funny! I am getting better with understanding temperatures in Celsius just from traveling a lot, but I’m still not great at it. It seems less precise to me than Fahrenheit (just because I don’t understand it probably) so I still get confused.

All of these are really new to me but especially the caffiene part. I guess I forget that not everyone is a coffee or soda addict and that sometimes people avoid it for health reasons too. I loved the Carmen Sandiego TV show when I was a kid… we didn’t have cable so I watched a lot of educational TV.

I guess I don’t talk about the caffeine thing much since I haven’t had it since long before I started my blog! Most people are shocked that I manage to live without it when they find out, but it really doesn’t bother me.

I don’t care for traditional smoothies (I mean, they are ok). I make “smoothies’ but they are more blended shakes than anything. I could play instruments, but not well–I lack a little thing called coordination. Things that YOU don’t already know about me (because I feel like you know more than most)…. hmmmm… nothing that outstanding. I guess I”m pretty boring after all!
I hate lychee. There.

Random fact: I gave up long distance running to play women’s full-contact football. (not the bra & panties kind — I’m fully clothed). It forces me to make food decisions that are about 700% better than they were when I was running long distances. Wide receiver, tacoma trauma. No broken bones this season, but a broken sternum my first season which kind of blew the whole “you gotta eat healthier” point home and straight to the heart.

That’s so awesome, Ashley! I love that you play football! I do not love that you got a broken sternum (how does one even break a sternum?!) but that is seriously awesome. Football is my absolute favorite sport to watch but I definitely do not have the guts to play it. Even kickball gives me a panic attack.

I’ll have all your smoothies! I’m on year 4 of smoothies for breakfast every day.
I also do not have a biological clock. Sometimes I think it would be a neat idea, and I’m open to meeting someone and wanting to have kids with them, but I have absolutely zero draw to have kids.

I can’t even have decaf! Decaf still has quite a bit of caffeine in it (more than is in the kinds of tea I can have) so I can’t drink it. I don’t really miss the taste of coffee at all anymore, although I definitely did at first!

There’s something about a sax that just makes every picture a million times cooler!https://www.flickr.com/photos/144928223@N04/shares/UwY83o
Another multi-instrument nerd, but I actually enjoyed it and almost went to university for music. I did teach piano for a couple of years though.

As for an actual random fact (the picture above is often my FB profile so it’s not really random), I spent the night in a German jail when I was 19. My mum only just learned this fact within the last six months. 🙂

Thanks for sharing those random facts! So much fun to learn the little tidbits of others’ lives!

My random fact (not a secret if you know me) is that I HATE, I mean WITH A PASSION, crickets and grasshoppers! I’m terrified of them, yet can’t kill them because (I’m so weird) I can’t kill anything that goes “crunch”! I’ve been known to cover a cricket with a bowl and leave the house for hours until my husband got home to kill it! Fall in Texas, aka “Cricket-apocalypse” is a dreaded time in my life! LOL!

I’m 32 and my biological clock isn’t ticking either. It hasn’t ever been started. I have always felt called to adoption or being a foster parent. I feel totally at peace with this choice, and figure what will be will be. What blows my mind is that other people think it is their business. It’s not! Sorry, I’m not sorry that I am not interested in birthing children. I’ve felt this way since I was 16, and don’t think I will be changing my mind anytime soon.

There is so much good crap in here that I literally copied it into OneNote on my iPad to read & write simultaneously … because that is just the type of nerd I am. So you get a long comment … deal with it 🙂

Funny thing is that I knew pretty much all of these things on some level – a kind of ‘oh yeah I remember her mentioning that at some point’. Except for the JTT thing – but hey, kids and posters are just a thing. Except that I never really had any, but that was as much the shape of our room as anything, but I also never found it compelling (I wasted my money on other stuff!).

Smoothies are an interesting thing … really, TEXTURE in food is interesting. I have really never cared one way or the other about textures, but my family definitely DOES! I tend to make mine more like desserts – banana and soy milk base, and add stuff like yogurt and fruit and possibly peanut butter or Nutella and also things like flax and chia seeds, etc. My family also thinks these are disgusting, so … oh well, right? 🙂

We stuck with mostly educational computer stuff for the kids early on – but not so much with TV. It all changed when Danny was in the hospital (first grade, getting kidney replumbed) and we gave him a GameBoy Advance … then gave his brother one that Christmas … and on from there :). Of course I have been a big gamer forever (well, since there were personal computers, anyway), so this was pretty natural.

I have kept my music alive through the years – back in high school I was getting some push to pursue music professionally (and also writing), but I knew that math & science were my true passions. But I expanded from bass (primary) and guitar (secondary) to keyboards through lessons my freshman year of college and built myself a digital music studio, that I maintain today – I actually have two: the main one in our basement, and an iPad based one. It is a great fun hobby for me.

‘Eating while running’ – totally get that. I know our tastebuds change with time, but I know that the runner-effect is stronger for me. Which is great – I always love real food anyway!

I still drink caffeine, but gave up soda just over 2.5 years ago. I liked diet soda, and even after I was running high volume would drink too much … our local grocery store was constantly having buy X, get Y free deals … on 6-packs of 24-oz soda. So I got Mtn Dew … and my daily volume increased. Eventually I just said ‘enough’ – I knew it was bad for me, and rather than a caffeine boost I felt like I was staving off the crash. So … no more soda. Just water after my morning coffee. (Not counting wine 🙂 )

Some random things:
– Not scared of dark since I was younger (12/13 or so), when there were nightmares it didn’t seem I could get out of without light. However, even earlier than that I got slightly stuck in a rock formation (I was the fat kid) and that has kept with me and I have a fear of having to wedge through a tight space and getting stuck.
– I learned a TON about wine in college – where friends and I drank what are now called ‘craft beers’ and decent wine. Even though we were college kids, the folks at the wine place would take time with us (after they knew we had money and would spend it). I still love many of the same styles as back then
– Cooking – I started out as a really good cook, watching PBS cooking shows – my fave was called ‘Cooking With Bernard’ and I learned loads of practical recipes like stuffed pork chops and steak pizzaiola and chicken Marsala that my parents had never eaten before. But in high school I stopped cooking and really had to start from scratch in college and when Lisa and I got together. It has been an adventure – but we are both really good cooks.

Biological clock. One of the worst things I have ever heard is someone saying ‘you are not a real woman unless you experience childbirth’. I mean, WTF? Story… an online non-running friend and her husband have decided not to have children … and her mother is essentially mentally abusing her about it, saying all the normal ‘oh, you will eventually’ stuff but also taking it further – arranging doctor visits, using times when they were supposed to meet for lunch to bring her to specialists, and generally pushing her to tears on a regular basis.

Our families – well, Lisa’s sister in particular – really pushed once we got married. In some ways I think our struggles with fertility and multiple miscarriages worked in our favor – we got to know in our hearts this was what we wanted, and also that if it didn’t happen we would be ok. And that either way people would be insensitive a$$hats.